6/28/15

Dharma Talk, June 1, 2015: How Not to Practice

Good
evening to you all and hello to those listening by way of the internet. This is
our regular Monday night class June 1, 2015. We talked about this a little bit
but I want to go over Some Ways Not to
Practice. This was the one I was talking in detail when I went talking to
the Michigan group. I’m just going to touch through here a little bit quicker.

The first
one is complacency as a problem.
Sometimes when we practice we become very complacent in what we’re doing. And
every time we sit, we sit with this idea that we’re just going to sit. We have
this idea of “This is it!” and it’s kind of like brushing your teeth. You
become used to brushing your teeth and you become complacent on how you brush
your teeth. The last time I went to the dentist, he said to me, “You don’t
brush your teeth right.” I go, “I brush them as hard as I can” and I realize
because he said, “Well, you don’t get this place and this place” so I realized
that I just became complacent in that.

Here when
we work, it’s the same way. We want to ferret out all the ideas of thought but
we ferret them out by way of illumination; not by trying to eliminate them but
by illuminating them. The process of illumination enables us to get to all of
them. But after a while, it’s like you’re home. Maybe your home is perfectly
clean but sometimes, people become very complacent. A few magazines here won’t
hurt; some socks here, shoes here or whatever. And we become complacent and
that becomes your new norm of cleanliness. I’m not going to criticize anybody
here about your home, like from the Romper room glasses to look at your house
(Laughs…) but we are the same way with the practice. We accept a lot of junks
in our mind and those junks are not helping us in terms of our practice. It’s
hindering the practice because we allow a certain amount of that kind of
interference in the mind.

When we
practice… this is the way I practice from the beginning. You use the beginner’s mind as if it’s the first
time you’ve used it. You use it and you go, “this time I’m really going to make
a strong effort to practice well.” You use it in this way so you’re not
complacent; like, “Okay, I’m going to get to this point and then I’m going to
paddle around here.” And you sit there in your meditation just paddling around
until something strikes you and then you’re off the method completely.

Chan is
very dynamic. It is active and it is an active mind. It is not a passive mind.
Sometimes people get the idea that stillness is the idea of a dead mind that
nothing is happening. It isn’t in this way. One has to be using the illuminated
mind where everything is moving, everything is reflected, everything is
changing all the time, moment-to-moment-to-moment. The mind is not engaged in
thoughts but in awareness. It is aware of these changes, completely aware of
it. And as a result of that, sees things much clearer than before.

It’s kind
of like you’re looking through the windshield of your car and you haven’t
cleaned it since before Christmas. You got used like looking through it so now
you have a new idea of tinted windows. (Laughs…) But this is not our practice. Every
time we sit, we should sit with the idea of perfecting the practice and trying
to get it right, trying to do the things to make it the way it should be
utilizing it. Not trying to do it from the view point of tying the strings too
tight or too lose but just the Middle Way of using the method properly. In this
way, you get rid of this complacency. I think complacency is the hobgoblin of
veteran sitters because you get to a point and you go, “I’m comfortable here. I
can sit; I don’t have leg pain; I don’t have this, I don’t have that so I’ll
just sit here” and you’re not pushing the envelope anymore. They don’t really
have that hunger of wanting to resolve mind and you just get used to it. You
just sit and you become good sitters. But it’s not about becoming good sitters.

Shifu, he
used to come and say at the beginning of a retreat, “Do you come here to
practice the method or practice your legs?” Some people are very good practitioners
of the legs. They can sit all day but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the
internal discussions have stopped. They were just sitting there like [a trade
of the phrase from the Forest Gump movie] sitting fools. They were just sitting
there like sitting fools. Forrest Gump, he would say that he was a running
fool. You are just sitting there as if you were doing something. Until one day,
Forrest Gump stopped running and said, “Wait a second, enough of this!”

So we
have to break through this complacency. We really have to be like a Bodhisattva
warrior and really try hard to work through all the sceneries that are arising
in the mind. We do that via the Right
View. And when we have the Right View, we let that essentially be our
lodestone as to where the mind should be and how the mind should sit. You
notice how I say the “mind” and not consciousness. So we have to work through
that.

Another
problem that comes up is… and this is maybe a variation of complacency, which
is I think I have it. When you say
“I think I have it,” you’re saying like, “This is the way to meditate. I’ll
just sit here like this. I can sit here all day. I’m comfortable; I’ve got it!”

My Dad,
when he would talk to us and we would say, “I know Dad, I know, I know, I
know!!!” And my Dad would say, “You know nothing!” But yet we sit there and we
think we know. Sometimes people would come when they sit and go, “I’ve got it!”
and there’s nothing that you can do with them because they are complacent that
they think they know they’ve got it. They are not interested in pushing
through. It’s that pushing that makes all the difference. It’s not a pushing
via a vigorous practice. It’s a pushing via using vigor in the practice to
maintain the method and using the spirit of Chan as this investigation or
cultivating mind. This investigation has nothing to do with words. It has to do
with this direct realization of mind, which is not going to come up if the self
is there.

If you invite the mind to the party and it says,
“Is consciousness going to be there?”

“Yeah.”

“I won’t
go. I’m not coming.” Mind is not going to come if consciousness is there.

But
consciousness is going to say, “I got it!”

The mind
says, “Got what?”

So we
have to be careful about that. And sometimes this “I got it” comes with small
realizations. People get these small realizations and they are not bad. They
are actually very good. Now, put them down and keep moving. But people kind of
drape themselves in that experience and every time they sit, they look for that
small realization. They would just be repeating that and repeating that
thinking “this is it!” It isn’t.

Another
thing not to do when sitting on a cushion is seek some kind of an experience. When we seek some kind of an
experience, essentially what we’re doing is we’re waiting there. We’re waiting
for the eggs to hatch so you’ll take anything that happens in the mind as some
kind of an experience. Sometimes just out of boredom we go, “There’s got to be
something happening. Wait, what was that? I saw something! It’s moving through
me. Nah!!! It’s only gas.” (Laughs…) You try to put a spin on it in terms of
what it is. “Oh, I saw colors or I saw this or I saw that.” You want to certify
something because of some experience that you have.

Sometimes
they are bodily experience where someone might feel very very light. Not bad,
but just move on! There’s nothing to see here so just keep going. You know,
those types of experiences are good if one does not cling to them. But if one
gets so excited about them, that’s a whole different story. And after a while,
what happens is that we begin to create more habitual energy of craving more
fantastic experience in the mind. And all of a sudden, we become good at it
until one day you’ll be saying, “Well, the other day I was talking to Manjusri.”
What? Where did you get that from? You know, you can create anything in the
mind. Yes.

Student:
I don’t have to seek the experience but sometimes something happens. I’m not
seeking it but trying to understand it; not during meditation but after. Is
that what you…?

Gilbert:
No, just leave them alone. Whatever happens just let them go. Don’t try to
understand it. Don’t try to experience it. Just go through it. The power is in
going through those experiences. Let’s say if it’s a contrived experience, you
derive the power of getting rid of this kind of clinging to existential
experience. If it’s an actual product of your practice, then you’ll want to
stay there. You’ll just have to want to keep moving. Hold on to the method but
don’t hold on to the experience at all. Don’t even stop. If you stop, you’ll be
like getting off the bike and you’ll be looking at the scenery. You’ll want to
keep pedaling through it. The power is in pedaling through it. You pedal and
pedal until you can no longer pedal. You just try it as hard as you can to keep
moving forward with it. You just don’t stop at all.

Same
student: It sounds really stupid but when we first start doing meditation,
being at peace was scary. So if we kind of not experience that… but in your
lecture, you say we’re supposed to be in peace.

Gilbert:
Actually that’s one of my “how not to practice.”

Same
student: Okay.

Gilbert:
So I’ll talk about that in a moment. But that’s true. Do not be afraid of the
practice because of the experiences. I think we have one person that was that
way. She had a real hard time with that. She has kind of those “beginner’s
luck” people that was able to get it right away and got afraid because she got
it right there but was afraid and ran. So we’ll talk about that later on.
Anything else?

Another
hang on the practice is misapplying the
method. In misapplying the method, you have to know what your method is. You
have to know how to do it and do it right. If you’re using the method [for instance]
Shikantaza, you’re not really trying to experience anything inside or outside
your body. You just want to have a general location of that body but within the
realm of the environment you’re sitting in. And that’s all. You don’t have to
do anything more to it. Otherwise, you’ll have some kind of a self-conceit or
self-love for that space you believe your body is occupying. If you go past
that and simply use that as your reference point [in terms of moving out from
there], it’s not bad. But when you don’t understand the method and you start
practicing it, it’s very difficult to get there. But even if you make some
mistakes in the method but your vigor is there, then you can overcome those and
do it in the right way unless it’s a fundamental where you’re trying to polish
up the self.

Part of
misapplying the method is just simply the lack
of concentration. A lot of times when we practice, we don’t have a lot of
concentration or we lose that ability to maintain that concentration. Of course
you have it during the first fifteen seconds and then what happens? It’s gone.
When you sit with the method, you sit
with the method before you even sit. So as you’re sitting down, you’re
putting down the towel and you’re sitting on the cushion, you’re already
keeping the mind calm, centered and quiet and not thinking about what it did
that day or whether you got the laundry done. You’re just going to sit there
and you’re already on the method.

When you
give your body to the cushion, you just sit there knowing that this body is
just going to be parked there. At that point, the body has no function. People
want to give it some function: make it move this way, make it move that way or
do something, but it doesn’t need to move. It just has to hold you straight up.
Actually that is not so hard to do because holding you straight up, if you find
the balance, your body is just balancing there. That’s why all of a sudden if
you get it just right when you’re sitting, it feels very light and comfortable.

But the
mind is the one that we really have to concentrate. How we concentrate is we
hold our method. In the beginning, we really kind of hold on like very hard. To
some people they’re holding on like some kind of an amusement park ride, you
know. They call them like what, white-knuckles? You’re holding on so it’s tight
and you’re holding there because you’re afraid that you’re going to go off the
method. But after a while, then you get used to the ride and realize that
you’re not going to fly out [most of the time], you’re relaxed and there’s no
problem with that. And you’re just holding on to the method like that (Gilbert
showing thumb and forefinger lightly touching as in Buddha hand stamp).

Actually
onetime when I went to an amusement park, I applied the Chan method to it and
it wasn’t very fun. It went down like, “I’m going fast; I’m turning to the left
very fast; I’m going upside-down; I can see that; Okay well…” Then the ride was
over. It wasn’t scary or anything and I’m going, “What a jiff!!!” (Laughs…)
Amusement park rides are supposed to scare you but we love that don’t we? We’d
rather have that than that peace and quiet. It’s so funny about human nature.

The next
one is the one I talk about all the time, and that is practicing consciousness versus letting the mind be aware. When we
practice consciousness, essentially what we’re doing is we misunderstand the
method. We misunderstand what we’re doing there and we allow this illusion of
the self to arise that clings to illusions. One of the things I talked about in
Michigan that had an impact on some few people was that [and I talked about
this here too], about this idea of when you are clinging to the self, that clinging to the self is invisible.
We can see the lemon-filled donut, we can see these other things that are there
and different things that are coming up but we can’t see that which turns the
eye towards that or what appears to turn the eye towards that. But essentially,
there is something that brings that jelly donut to the forefront of the mind
that has an energy to it. That is the mind that seeks continuation, the mind
that is interested in desire and subject and object. Those are three of the Four
Static Defilements of Nescience Entrenchment. The other one is Mundane
Gestation.

But as we
see things in the mind when we’re beginning to meditate, we become ignorant
that this jelly donut [that was off on the peripheral], all of a sudden moves
to the forefront of the mind. We never saw that. It isn’t the jelly donut that
does that nor is it the jelly donut that makes you fat, it’s the hand that
moves it towards your mouth from the desire. So when we sit to meditate,
through our mind we see this movement. I was talking to somebody this weekend [and
kind of blew my analogy] about a Black Hole. If you have a Black Hole, that
doesn’t give off any kind of a light or images because of its gravitational
force but it has an effect on the stars around it. The stars are actually
moving in accordance with that gravitational pull. This is where wisdom arises,
is that when we’re sitting to meditate, leave all those stuff alone like I was
talking about before like the stars in the firmament. You just leave them all
there. They are all there perfectly reflecting in accordance with causes and
conditions.

When all
of a sudden you see one coming by like a comet in the center of the mind,
something is moving it. It’s not moving by itself. That is subtle wisdom to be
able to begin to see your “self.” That illusory self has a habitual tendency
that has an interest there and it’s drawing that to the forefront. We can let
go of the Jelly donut but we’re all sad to let go of that force. We have to
illuminate that force. We cannot prove it by sight because it’s colorless and
formless. But how we prove it is by seeing how it reacts around other
phenomenal forms because we can’t see it. And even non-forms like thought
itself and how a thought can come up in the mind, “How did that come up?” And
when you understand it, you will see that there is something that is pulling it
up.

The
illumination then is illuminating all of that to see that it’s all there
happening in accordance with Pratītyasamutpāda. I was
corrected by a Buddhist Studies Professor that it’s not Paticca-samuppada. Pratityasamutpada
is causes and conditions never fail. So we see that movement there. This is the
illumination of the mind - this subtle wisdom that’s able to see this kind of
movement.

When we
don’t use this Right View in our practice of meditation, we’re essentially
practicing legs. We’re not going to get there because we’re just practicing our
legs; we’re practicing consciousness. Practicing consciousness is not going to
get us there because that consciousness cannot be proved. The question that
Sentha brought up “what was the function of consciousness” and I answered that
for her last week. There’s no permanency; there’s nothing there that has any
kind of a true ego, a personality or a life in being. It’s all formed in
accordance with causes and conditions. When we see it in this way, then we see
it clearly.

Student:
I’m thinking of Sentha’s question and your answer and my interpretation I
brought up for it here. That consciousness is the causes and conditions applied
to all the intakes; it’s the translator, or the compiler or whatever of all the
feeling and emotions and listening and hearing and wants and desires. It puts
it all up in order and gives it, and now it’s the practice. It’s work; it’s a
function; it is not, it does, it isn’t.

Gilbert:
It is the function.

Same
student: It just does; it is not a being.

Gilbert:
It is not a being; you’re right. It’s just what they call the Five Aggregates,
the Skandhas: form, sensation, perception, volition and consciousness. They are
all empty. You’re quite right. You see, the funny thing about what you’re doing
is you’re back right into the Dharma. Keep going.

Same
student: Then I don’t understand one sense why I came up with that question
because mind doesn’t have anything to do with consciousness. Does that mean it
does in a way that consciousness is all in that Buddha-womb but it cannot be
mixed with it somehow like oil and water?

Gilbert:
It’s not really in that way from your viewpoint of seeing that oil and water
are consciousness. This is why we have the saying, “Fools turn mind into consciousness and sages return consciousness to
mind.” So things are perfectly in its place; acting exactly like it should
in accordance with causes and conditions. Form is not other than consciousness,
consciousness is not other that form; form is precisely emptiness, emptiness is
precisely form. It is precise; it is in this way that it’s functioning. But
because of our deep entrenched ignorance, we have convinced ourselves that the
self does exist in the sense that is an individual life in being.

Sentha’s
question [What is the function of consciousness?] is a very interesting
question in terms of looking at it as related to the nature of mind. How does
that fit? Does mind have this consciousness and how does that work in that way?
It’s an interesting question because it’s still illuminating in your mind as
well. Keep it going. That is what you should be doing with this one; looking at
it the way you’re looking at it. You’re doing fine with that. You’re not going
to come up with a mathematical equation about the whole thing. Any mathematical
solution would be like an ancient Master painting an imperfect circle and the
Master is drawing the circle in the sky with his finger. Even that is too much.

Same
student: I feel lost right now.

Gilbert:
It’s okay to be lost because what you’ve done with being lost is you’ve lost
this idea of acceptance of consciousness as being you or as an individual life
in being.

Same
student: But it’s me; it’s my causes and conditions. That’s what makes me
Paloma and not anyone else or Wendy. My consciousness is a result of my causes
and conditions and that’s why if I see a bird flying around, I say, “Oh, how
nice” while Wendy might say, “Naah!” I don’t know, right?

Gilbert:
No, I don’t see you. I don’t see you at all.

Same
student: Wait, You need to see me otherwise, you would bump into me when you
walk by.

Gilbert:
It’s the awareness of mind that would keep me from bumping into you.

Same
student: It’s the consciousness of the body, of a mass that is there as a
result of my causes and conditions that made me reincarnating that way that I
am.

Gilbert:
Consciousness is that one which enables the mind to contemplate. When you’re
seeing it that way, you’re using kind of like a Descartes type of
“I think therefore I am.” And then I’d go like, “Who said that?” What’s
happening is you’re coming in and out of this and that is good because you’re
like trying to reel in a big giant fish. And you’re getting exhausted with this
and you go, “Ahhh, “I’m” still here!
I’m still here because I say I’m here.” But if you keep going and you keep
working at it, you’re going to find out that when you’ve reeled it in, there is
nothing on there at the other end of the line. That’s why the ancients said,
“You’re fishing for a quarry five hundred fathoms down, but your line only
reaches four hundred fathoms.” They don’t say these words idly. You can never
get there through consciousness.

Same
student: What I am trying to do is separate it.

Gilbert:
Don’t separate it; keep it all together. That’s the best thing to do, okay?
There is nothing inside or nothing outside. You just see it as perfectly in its
place. Paloma is perfectly sitting there in her place. This is what we call
Paloma.

Same
student: And now you see me.

Gilbert:
I don’t see you. I see the thing that says “she’s Paloma” and what we call
Paloma. But when I say, “I don’t see you,” it means “did you not see an
individual life, a personality there?” It’s all part of mind and as one
practices more, the more and more one sees that. And everywhere they look, they
see mind. But that’s what enables them through that wisdom the suffering that’s
here from the human conditions. Does Paloma suffer?

Same
student: No, I’ve had enough for this day. I think I got lost somewhere.

Gilbert:
You’re fine. And I want to say, “You’re there; “you” just don’t want to go down the drain.”

Same
student: I don’t want to go down the drain. I want to go up somewhere.

Gilbert:
Valerie is like looking at me going, “That wasn’t a very good analogy – going
down the drain…” (Laughs…)

Ok,
moving on. The next one of the obstructions is impatience -sitting there
and going, “I’ve got to get it.” Sometimes I see people like at a retreat that
I’m at and I just laugh because it seems like you can feel them going, “I’ve
got to get this; it’s almost lunch time. I have to get this before lunch time.”
And they’re not going to get it because they’ve created so much impatience.

You don’t
know how long some Masters have studied this. Master Sheng Yen has gone through
a solitary retreat for seven years. That’s quite a bit of time but we want to
get it before we go home that night. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one could
not do that but not with that kind of an attitude. The attitude that gets you
there is to “let go.” You just simply let go of the idea of time, let go of the
idea of acquiring anything, or putting anything down. One has to make their
practice impeccable; absolutely impeccable. The better you are at practicing
meditation, the further along you are going to go. And it’s not just rope
meditation; it’s bringing everything that needs to be there in meditation:
concentration, this kind of a feeling of sublimeness, one-pointed mind, keeping
the mind in the present moment, following the method, relaxing the body,
relaxing the min; all those things.

I’m not a
golfer but I know golfers go crazy because they have to do all these different
things. It’s so funny when you see them and they are going to take their swings.
Their knees have to be this way; the eye has to be on the ball; the shoulders have
to be there; all these things have to go all the way through the swing. It’s the
same thing with our practice; it has to be impeccable and we have to have the
patience to put it all together. We can’t just have two things there. We’ve got
to have it all there [without it all being there]. It has to be natural so that
when we’re actually there over on the golf course, the swing is natural. And
when we’re practicing in meditation, it’s naturally occurring. These are the
things that will help you.

That’s it
for today. We’ve gone through half of the list today and we will continue on
some other time. Any questions?